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such tenacity, that the separation was accomplished with the greatest 

 difficulty. 



In the same collection of fossil bones is to be found the skeleton, 

 nearly complete, of a Mastodon of very large size : the ribs are want- 

 ing, and the upper part of the cranium. The transverse diameter of 

 the head, on a line with the foramen magnum, is three feet. The os 

 femoris, in a perpendicular line, stands three feet nine inches high, 

 and all the other bones are in this proportion. An estimate of the 

 altitude of the animal when living, founded upon careful observations, 

 instituted with the same view on the skeleton from Bucyrus, Ohio, 

 recently obtained by the Society, would leave the inference, that the 

 former animal has reached a height of from twelve to thirteen feet at 

 the shoulders. This animal, in a popular advertisement on the sub- 

 ject of the Museum by Mr. Koch, is rated at eighteen feet in height, 

 an altitude so great as to exceed much the evidence derivable from a 

 measurement of the longest bones of the extremities, and the induc- 

 tive and comparative estimate thence obtained. 



The internal table of the cranium, the brain case, is entire, with a 

 small surface of the contiguous cellular structure of bone in another 

 fragment of the Mastodon. This forms so complete an oval body, 

 that, in Dr. Horner's opinion, it is somewhat difficult to conceive that 

 its shape was the result of merely accidental causes; Dr. Horner in- 

 deed thinks it rather authorizes the inference, that it had been 

 chiselled or hammered designedly into that shape by the human co- 

 temporaries of the animal. 



There is also a small head, eighteen or twenty inches long, with 

 tusks ten or eleven inches long in the upper jaw, and four mastodon 

 teeth on each side of each jaw. This head is somewhat broken. 

 The os frontis and the face, so far as Dr. Horner could judge, are so 

 placed in regard to their front surface as to form a deep circular con- 

 cavity, approximating, in shape, a fragment in the cabinet of the Soci- 

 ety. Whether it ought to be viewed merely as a young Mastodon 

 Giganteum, or another species of the Mastodon, Dr. Horner con- 

 siders to be at present doubtful. 



There are two radii of the Mastodon with the epiphyses or articu- 

 lar ends detached, owing to the youth of the animal : these pass for the 

 arm bones of a giant fourteen or fifteen feet high, when his skeleton 

 was complete. A similar misapprehension exists in regard to the 

 vertebrae of a quadruped, probably a buffalo or young mammoth, 



D 



